Shakespeare’s Birthday Celebrations

A History of the Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations
Stratford-upon-Avon’s
Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations are pretty much
taken
for granted these days. But the idea of staging such an event was
down to one man.
All
performances of Shakespeare’s plays were banned in his home town
from
as early as 1606, a ban that remained in place during the
playwright’s
last years in Stratford, and which, in 1624 (eight years
after
Shakespeare’s death), resulted in the Town Council paying a fee of
6
Shillings to prevent members of The King’s Men (Shakespeare’s old
London
Company), from performing the playwright’s work in Stratford.
Obviously
theatre, in the early 17^th century, was not Stratford’s business,
and with the coming of the Civil War in 1642 there was no time,
space, or energy for theatre. The works of Shakespeare, and the man
himself, were virtually forgotten.
Not
until the reign of George II did Shakespeare’s work once again surface
in Britain, and this time in the hands of a brilliant young actor
called David Garrick, who transformed Shakespeare’s by now virtually
moribund dramas into sprawling, colourful, noisy theatrical hits.
Suddenly every actor, and theatre company in England, wanted to perform
Shakespeare. As a result and a staggering 130 years after Shakespeare’s
death Stratford saw the first ever performance of a play by
the ‘peoples poet’.
The
play was Othello a brave choice for a first offering and was produced
by the extrovert actor/​manager, John Ward, at the old Town Hall in
1746. The occasion was a colourful fund-​raising event to help restore a
crumbling bust of Shakespeare in Holy Trinity Church.
John
Ward, born in 1703, was a well known strolling player of his day, and
later the grandfather of the hugely popular actress Sarah Siddons. And
that warm, and rather wet, Tuesday evening in September must have been
a splendid affair, with the blacked-​up Ward playing Othello with histrionic
relish and dash. Between each act and perhaps as a way of lightening
the unfamiliar, and hugely emotional, dramatic load there were
several entertainments of singing by Mrs Elrington (who played Desdemona,
as if she hadn’t got enough on her hands), with violin accompaniment
by a Mrs Wilton. The performance began at 6pm and cost Two Shillings
and Sixpence for a pit seat, and One Shilling for a gallery seat;
a great deal of money in 1746. John Ward had at last broken the taboo,
and by all accounts it was a hugely successful event.
But
the task of ensuring that Shakespeare’s name was secure in the world of
theatre fell to the aforementioned actor David Garrick.
David
Garrick was a very talented, rather vain, somewhat portly, and hugely
popular Hereford born actor (his family were of French descent, and
his father a professional soldier) who was, by the 1740s, the toast of
theatrical London. He also knew a good thing when he saw one and spent
the next twenty years of his life re-​introducing virtually the whole
of the Shakespearean canon to the theatre going public. It was a very
wise, and profitable, move.
Having
done that, and earning a huge amount of money in the process, he felt
he needed to ensure his name and that of Shakespeare’s were intertwined
for posterity. The spectacular PR event he eventually conjured
up a three day Jubilee Celebration to mark Shakespeare’s 205^th
birthday in 1769 was destined to go down in theatrical, and meteorological
history.
By
1769, with the Town Council now housed in its new, Florentine inspired,
Town Hall, situated on the corner of Sheep Street and Chapel Street,
and with the site of New Place, and Shakespeare’s Birthplace, now
centres of increasing pilgrimage, Stratford’s councillors, ready to increase
still further Shakespeare’s appeal, agreed to confer the freedom
of the town upon who else but David Garrick.
The
councillors new that Garrick had a large Shakespearean collection and hoped
the celebrated actor might donate a statue, or picture, of Shakespeare
to adorn their new Town Hall, thereby signalling to the London
intelligentsia their obvious love, and respect, of Shakespeare and
his work. The councillors were also prepared to assure Garrick that his
portrait would hang next to Shakespeare’s in celebration of them
both.
Garrick
was sounded out, and with his acceptance assured, an elaborately decorated
Scroll of Freedom was produced and placed in an ornate mulberry
casket and delivered, with due ceremony, to Garrick’s London home.
On the 8^th of May 1769 Garrick replied to the Stratford Town Council
by letter:
GENTLEMEN, I
cannot sufficiently express my acknowledgement for the honour you
have done
me in electing me a burgess of Stratford-​upon-​Avon: a town which will
be ever distinguished and reverenced as the Birthplace of Shakespeare.
There are many circumstances which have greatly added to the
Obligation you conferred upon me. The Freedom of your town given to me
unanimously, sent to me in such an elegant and inestimable Box, and